..
…It wasn’t even four o’clock yet, but my grandmother had drilled punctuality into me, and so I found myself standing among the columns and chandeliers too early, searching for a face I couldn’t find anywhere. I briefly considered just leaving, but the thought of having to disappoint my grandmother over the phone outweighed my nervousness.
Then I saw her, all the way in the back by the piano: a lady in an elegant red suit, white hair with a violet sheen, neatly styled, red lips. I walked toward her.
“Are you… my grandmother’s Aunt Sophie?”
She looked me up and down, thoroughly. Then she smiled.
“So you’re Roman?” Her voice was husky but strong. “Have a seat,” she commanded rather than suggested.
I sat down, and as the heat from the street subsided, so did some of my tension. I asked how I should address her, whether “Great-Aunt Sophie” was correct.
“Nonsense,” she said. “You’ll call me Aunt Sophie.” And then, without beating around the bush: “Did your grandmother also tell you why you’re supposed to meet me?”
“To get to know you. My grandmother thinks very highly of you,” I replied, like a well-behaved boy.
The waiter came; I ordered coffee, and she ordered an Earl Grey. While we waited, I noticed a small brooch on her collar, a stylized J. “For Josef,” she said before I could ask. “That was my husband. Your great-uncle.”
From then on, she took over the conversation, and I quickly realized it was less of a chat and more of an interrogation: friendly, but direct. How the flight had been. What I wanted to do in America. What I was studying. “Postgraduate Business Administration,” I said, and heard for myself how meaningless that sounded, so I added that I was actually mainly after a green card—no job, no green card; no green card, no future here.
“So, the classic immigrant story,” she remarked with amusement.
“Maybe. More than anything, I need some distance from my father and his new family.” I ended up telling her more than I’d intended: that my mother had died three years ago, that my father had remarried two years later, that I’d started working at his company right after college, and that it hadn’t gone well.
“The butcher’s daughter,” she added dryly. “Your grandmother wrote that to me.”
“Exactly her. She’s gained a lot of influence over my father.”
“That sounds like a Bavarian tragedy.” She let me dwell on that for a moment, then asked, “So you gave up everything to start over?”
“Yes.” The word hung heavier in the room than I’d expected.
“You did the right thing.”
I felt my heartbeat slow down. For the first time in months, my decision felt right.
She asked about my future plans, and I told her about the homestay program, the university in Buffalo, and the six weeks I’d be traveling across the country with a classmate, staying with American host families. “Well, that sounds like it’ll be fun,” she said, and then, out of the blue: “How old are you, anyway?”
“Twenty-five.”
“You’ve got this,” she said. “You had the courage to leave Germany and take the plunge here. Then you’ll be able to find a job, too.”…